


someone you loved

by sullenflower



Category: Actor RPF, Real Person Fiction, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars RPF, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: At Least You Have Beautiful Ghosts, Emotional Infidelity, F/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, RPF, Sorry Not Sorry, timing is everything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:14:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21999571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sullenflower/pseuds/sullenflower
Summary: Day in, night out, you never forget beautiful ghosts, especially from someone you loved.
Relationships: Adam Driver/Daisy Ridley
Comments: 11
Kudos: 70





	someone you loved

He realizes, looking back now, that the only way to ever orate and make sense of this story is to acknowledge the naked truth that it started as all fated love stories do, no matter how simple or cliché:

With a sincere smile gracing the lips of a woman always out of reach right from the start.

With the enrapturing need to catch and hold onto a non-corporeal sensation before it was lost to a moment in time and untaken chances, those hauntingly belonging to a lonely man and woman who never saw each other coming.

With a confession that never left one’s lips, _I love you_ the quiet ghost that sits bedside as one dreams of what could’ve been.

***

Strokes of a vivid fuchsia, energetic violet, and vengeful orange paint the winter skies over Brooklyn. Dusk is settling into its bed of skyscrapers, a blanket of city noise and thick air smothering the atmosphere. Outside his apartment, people bundled up in heavy coats and snow boots rush the sidewalks to go home hand in hand as traffic signs lead them onward.

“So, what do you think?”

_That everything’s moving too fast._

They say the notorious New York minute is the living pulse that beats rushing hot blood into the veins of the cold city. No moment to rest. No moment to think.

At 20 years of age, high on adrenaline, thirsty for escape, and filled to the brim with a youthful determination only a misunderstood Midwesterner looking to get numbingly lost amongst careless crowds—New York and its fast pace felt like skydiving from the highest possible point in a constellation and into a dark uncharted part of the ocean, no sight of limitations or the impending crash. Just an infinite dark blue melting into a bottomless darker blue.

At 36 years of age, he’s long ago sunk into the bone-chilling depths of the East Coast’s winter months, the anonymity of blending into foot traffic, and sleepless nights. It’s no longer home. The reality of aching bones, pre-scheduled therapy sessions, international flights, and movie sets in foreign countries are more familiar now than the coffee shop two blocks down south his building he swore was new but has been open the last seven months.

Where there was once a new chapter unfolding, it feels as though he’s trudging through the middle of a prolonged novel, lost—

“I think it’s the only way I can see this story ending,” JJ says exhaustedly.

Even thousands of miles across the Atlantic Ocean away from London, the blow to his chest is swift. Adam’s throat seizes to function. He can’t breathe quite right. What are the right words to say when there is no script to guide him?

“So that’s… it?” He swallows.

Shuffling sounds of paper echo over the telephone. “Yes.”

“You’re the director.”

“And you’re an active participant of this story.”

Adam chews on his lip. He takes a breath.

“What does… what did she think?”

A pause.

JJ doesn’t hold back. “It was hard for her. But I think she gets it now—she understands. There’s no other way for this story to end. He’s made his choices and has to live with them. She still has an adventure waiting for her out there not tied to him.”

The small hand of his silver watch ticks by second after second.

A New York minute closing in.

Where there once was a new chapter unfolding, it feels as though he’s trudging through the middle of a prolonged novel, lost. A byronic hero in one sentence, an antagonist in another, a man who knows what must be done to make amends now, he’s stood in the middle of the last chapter he’s long let bleed its course for fear of the inevitable outcome. Now, the conclusion is staring right at him and there’s nothing left to do except turn the last page.

“I’ll do it for the story, then.”

The phone clicks and a new New York minute begins.

***

Adam stares at the official movie script set before him on the clinical white table. He tightens his grip on his styrofoam cup of coffee. Black. Long cold after the mandatory saccharine _hello’s_ and _how are you’s_ provided an ache to stomach through.

The shoes of the cast and crew scuffle the floor as they take their final seat for their last ever reading.

On the left to him, Oscar Isaac sits down with a friendly pat to his back.

On his right side, empty air. Deliberate.

Yet, this self-imposed exile guised under the justification of _this is how he works_ is shot through when, no matter how far off to the left side of the table she is, sitting far from him, he still can’t keep his eyes facing downward.

He doesn’t mean for it to happen, really. The way his sight can’t help but gravitate toward her, palms itching, feet twitching, heart racing.

Upon the third time glancing, she stares right back at him.

Daisy merely nods and offers a small smile.

“No one understands me,” she says out loud.

But he did. Once. Far away, hidden to themselves in the cliffs of the Emerald Isle, lost in the maze of wet ancient caves, warm in the stuffy small ocean towns—red noses and calloused hands busy with deafening liquor and soft, barely-there touches.

As a man full of self-doubt, he came to see the brilliant British girl full of energy past the sly smirks and doe eyes. Another cynic like him. Where he preferred to obsess and think, she chose to sing and laugh.

Everything changed that one verdant summer.

Toeing the line of friendship and _something_ _more_ , long content stretches of silence that held no need for spoken words, things changed when his eyes searched for hers and she’d find him effortlessly through skeleton crews and jagged moss-covered boulders. Sitting upon the vast Atlantic Ocean, bordered by the Irish and Celtic Seas, stolen moments were witnessed by their very own island.

Skellig Michael, undisturbed and at peace, silently engraved yet another story onto its stones, blades of grass and growing blooms keen to whisper the tales of those since long gone.

Adam had understood Daisy once—

A kick in the shin brings him back to reality. Under the harsh fluorescent glare of studio lights in Pinewood. Oscar subtly motions to the script.

—But that was four years in a past since frozen in memory, scraps here and there beginning to fade around the edges, the sensations having already left their marks deeply embedded.

The intimate words she’d spoken today weren’t meant for him.

He reads Kylo Ren’s line in response: “But I do.”

***

His last day on set renders him ill with a cold brought on by industrial machines blowing relentless biting winds and stinging needles of water.

In a twisted way, he can’t help but be thankful he has no lines in his final moments.

There are tell-tale spots of burgeoning purple on his knuckles, dirt and sweat clinging to his hair and cheeks, lines indented deep in the layers of his skin from the weapons he used to spar on scene.

And it’s all come down to this very moment.

Kylo hurriedly crawls to a Rey lying lifeless on the split ground, desperate and confused.

He grabs her hand, searches for a pulse, a weaker one to his frantically pounding veins.

Lifting her by the arms, he settles his leg beneath her for support, clutches her to his chest.

Her head connects to his neck and he keeps her there, holds her, palms her messy hair.

The gloves come off, he pants at her hairline and wraps a hand around her small stomach.

Seconds pass.

His tears continue to trail past his face and onto her body, fiery and distinct from the rain.

A bloody hand moves over his own, her eyes fluttering open in a daze, mouth parting open.

She looks—no, _beams_ —at him and slowly sits up to hold onto his neck, goosebumps rising.

Their breaths intermingle, heavy and full of unspoken words.

Maybe it’s the way she looks at him, blindingly unreserved and serene that it reminds him of late nights spent in hotel rooms asking about favorite foods, music one likes to listen to, songs that remind them of each other; _do you get along with your mother? How’s your sister like? Who’s hurt you before? Is this normal in a relationship? Will you wait for me?_

Rey cradles Kylo’s neck, her hands memorizing the landscape of his face.

Leaning in, Adam and Daisy kiss—

“And cut!” JJ claps his hands. He looks up from the video monitor. “You can both let go now.”

***

A knock on his trailer door pauses his packing for the flight back home.

“One minute!”

Adam runs a hand through his hair, a headache forming at the temples.

He sighs as he zips up his final bag.

Opening the door, there’s no one to be found. Instead, the frigid London air clashes with the artificial heat emanating from inside the vehicle.

It’s nighttime and just as he’s about to take the first step down his set of stairs, he looks down on time, his foot pauses midair—

There, sitting on the first step lies a slice of cake from the wrap party going on at the moment. The one he told everyone, with some regret, that he wouldn’t be able to make it to because of _something he ate for lunch earlier that day, food poisoning perhaps_. A lie, really.

He had matters that needed attention back in New York. His wife, his kid, his dog, his unread scripts for future projects he needed so as to bury this six-year part of his life in peace while he still could, while he still was a man who knew right from wrong, while he still held some loyalty to his duties he swore to uphold… before the memories and haunted dreams of _what if’s_ finally caught up to him in a whirl of pink lips, hazel green eyes, and shiny chestnut brown hair.

He leans down to pick up the paper plate.

Inside, he goes to gather his luggage when he finally sees the shape of the cake bathed in yellow light.

A BB-8 cake toppled to its side, but still mainly intact.

Underneath the plate, a lavender sticky note.

The scrawled caption:

_You’ll never be alone. You’ll always have understood me._

_-someone you loved_

**Author's Note:**

> :)
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> as if this needed to be said, but I guess it doesn't hurt: This is fiction. None of this is to disrespect those involved. 
> 
> quite frankly, with such palpable chemistry between Adam and Daisy, is it really a wonder one can't help but write about them?
> 
> (and of course, there not only needed to be quote references to TLJ and TROS, there also needed to be a reference to that dang bb8 cake they made together bringing us back full circle)
> 
> <3


End file.
